Can’t a morose mutant warrior simply sail off into the sunset with his surrogate father? As Logan, the latest X-Men movie opens, all world-weary Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) wants to do is buy a boat so he and an ailing Professor X (Patrick Stewart) can spend the rest of their days at sea. But boats don’t come cheap, so Logan reluctantly agrees to escort a young girl named Laura—a pissed-off tween with powers not unlike his—to North Dakota for $50,000. Thus begins the final Hugh Jackman–Patrick Stewart X-Men installment (both actors have said this is their last superhero movie)— and the impressive film debut of newcomer Dafne Keen, who plays Laura.

Keen’s wild-eyed, charismatic Laura is memorable not only for her slice-and-dice adamantium-claw action scenes—shredding burly cyborgs with ease—but also for her ability to convey the young heroine’s feral yet innocent nature. (The latter is highlighted by a unicorn T-shirt and pink-and-blue floral sunglasses.) And she does all this without uttering more than two dozen words throughout the entire film.

While Keen makes playing a rage-filled mute mutant look easy, casting the young actress to play her was not. Initially, director James Mangold tasked U.K. casting director Priscilla John, with whom he’d worked on The Wolverine, with finding a 12-year-old girl with martial-arts, tumbling, and acrobatic skills who spoke both English and Spanish. But after scouring England and Ireland and seeing more than 500 kids, John was coming up short. When she expanded her search to younger girls and those living in Spain, her associate, Francesca Bradley, remembered Keen, who lives in Madrid with her British actor father, Will Keen (The Crown, Wolf Hall), and her Spanish actress mother, Maria Fernandez Ache.

John asked Will, whom she knew, to put Keen, then a 10-year-old acrobat and gymnast who’d already appeared alongside her dad in the Spanish TV show The Refugees, on tape. John was knocked out by what she saw: the four-foot-two-inch girl clambered up and down a huge bookcase in the Keen’s Madrid sitting room while picking up and assessing objets d’art. Once back on the ground, she did a tumbling run across the floor. In another sequence, she wordlessly gobbled down crackers without looking at them. “She’s looking all around her . . . and [in her eyes] you could see she was devouring everything in that room,” John remembers. “She had an innocence and a vulnerability, and I said to James, ‘People are going to fall in love with her.’ ”

Some notes from Mangold, and a second audition tape later—“My job was made much easier having Will look after her,” John says—and Keen and her parents were on a plane to the States so she could screen test with Jackman. Though some other American girls were also in the running, John, who previously discovered future X-Man Nicholas Hoult when casting About a Boy in the early aughts, was pretty confident Keen would snag the role: “I had a good idea that this child was extremely special, and I would have been surprised if she hadn’t gotten it,” she says. Still, since anything can happen in Hollywood, when the test was done, John told Keen to go back to school and get on with her life.

Of course, now that Logan has opened, Keen’s life will be drastically changed. Look for plenty more to come from this newly minted child star, whom John suggests is already signed to Fox (the studio releasing Logan) for future projects. Though the veteran casting director believes Keen’s parents will continue to focus on her education and keeping life as normal as possible, she has no doubt the now 12-year-old could be at the beginning of a long career along the lines of former child actresses Natalie Portman and Jodie Foster. “[Keen] has got such powerful presence,” John says. “She’s got extraordinary charisma. She’s either going to be heading a huge international company, or she’s going to be a big star when she grows up.” Whatever she ends up doing, it will likely involve a lot less glowering and a lot more talking. And if nothing else, she’ll have the best 2016 summer-vacation story about filming a superhero movie.

Then again, maybe Keen should keep her summers free. While promoting Logan, Mangold has said he’d love to see another film that centered on her character: "That’s certainly something I’d be involved in," he told We've Got This Covered three weeks ago. A girl heroine taking over for Wolverine? That’s a story we can get behind.

Captain America

A true testament to the transformative powers of style, Captain America is the patriotic alter ego of a World War II–era Brooklynite transformed by a team of army scientists into a Nazi-fighting Samaritan. He turns to inventor Howard Stark to outfit him in a scientifically advanced suit in a star-spangled palette (is that performance-tech heritage denim we see?) with G.I. Joe–inspired accessories, like a leather harness belt and M1 helmet mask.

Black Widow

The Russian turncoat siren—she was a spy for her motherland before joining the U.S. spy agency SHIELD—stuns in a venomously skintight suit in jet black. For the Black Widow, form follows function: microscopic suction cups on her extremities let her scale walls with the prowess of her namesake.

Spider-Man

Spider-Man dons the streamlined, web-print Spidey Suit in an electric blue and red to glide through the world by his web by hands and feet—nothing less than the latest smart fabrics for the king of geek chic. While the science-fiction suit makes Spider-Man singularly agile, it’s his Spidey Sense that really helps him save the day, proving you’ve got to have brains to complement the braun.

Iron Man

The man in the red iron suit wields his sartorial engineering skills to address the social and political ills of the world—picture the TED Talk! Iron Man’s gold and red suit of armor, with its glowing orb of an arc reactor, is not simply his support system, but his weapon. The hero has designed a slew of suits for activities from space travel to deep-sea diving, solidifying him as science-fiction’s answer to Savile Row.

Blossom

Blossom is the brainiest mercenary in the trio of sweetie-pie crime-fighting sisters we know as the Powerpuff Girls—and, we might add, she looks mighty good doing it. With her strawberry-blond hair, big red bow, and mod bubblegum dress, she may not look mean, but a karate-chopping strategist lingers just behind those pink saucer eyes.

Captain America

A true testament to the transformative powers of style, Captain America is the patriotic alter ego of a World War II–era Brooklynite transformed by a team of army scientists into a Nazi-fighting Samaritan. He turns to inventor Howard Stark to outfit him in a scientifically advanced suit in a star-spangled palette (is that performance-tech heritage denim we see?) with G.I. Joe–inspired accessories, like a leather harness belt and M1 helmet mask.

Black Widow

The Russian turncoat siren—she was a spy for her motherland before joining the U.S. spy agency SHIELD—stuns in a venomously skintight suit in jet black. For the Black Widow, form follows function: microscopic suction cups on her extremities let her scale walls with the prowess of her namesake.

Spider-Man

Spider-Man dons the streamlined, web-print Spidey Suit in an electric blue and red to glide through the world by his web by hands and feet—nothing less than the latest smart fabrics for the king of geek chic. While the science-fiction suit makes Spider-Man singularly agile, it’s his Spidey Sense that really helps him save the day, proving you’ve got to have brains to complement the braun.

Batman

Batman serves in his capacity as unofficial guardian of Gotham City in the infamous Batsuit, an all-black bodysuit with bat-inspired details like a webbed, wing-like cape, a mask with prick ears—all paid for with the billionaire crime-fighter’s trusty trust fund. If only more one-percenters were such do-gooders!

Catwoman

This feline fatale elevated cat-burgling to a super-sexy art in her snug black cat suit and kitty ears. There’s more than a dollop of the sadomasochistic in her mask, whip, and thigh-high boots, which is perhaps what has long kept rich boy Batman clawing for more.

By Ron Phillips/ Warner Bros./from Everett Collection.

Kim Possible

Tangerine-haired teen Kim Possible sends up the tropes of superhero bravura while balancing a secret-agent regimen with the travails of high school. Her signature combination of harem-cargo fatigues with a black cropped turtleneck suggest a Michael Kors spin on Indiana Jones.

Iron Man

The man in the red iron suit wields his sartorial engineering skills to address the social and political ills of the world—picture the TED Talk! Iron Man’s gold and red suit of armor, with its glowing orb of an arc reactor, is not simply his support system, but his weapon. The hero has designed a slew of suits for activities from space travel to deep-sea diving, solidifying him as science-fiction’s answer to Savile Row.

Blossom

Blossom is the brainiest mercenary in the trio of sweetie-pie crime-fighting sisters we know as the Powerpuff Girls—and, we might add, she looks mighty good doing it. With her strawberry-blond hair, big red bow, and mod bubblegum dress, she may not look mean, but a karate-chopping strategist lingers just behind those pink saucer eyes.